Cyber News, or Not

The “pause” the Air Force’s new leadership has put on the service’s push to create a Cyber Command—which generated numerous news reports that the whole enterprise was down the drain—prompted Louisiana officials to trek to Washington to find out the status themselves. Officials from Bossier Parish and Bossier City, near Barksdale Air Force Base, met this week with Congressional staffers for Louisiana lawmakers and private companies potentially interested in the Cyber Innovation Center and National Cyber Research Park in the works near Barksdale, calling the sessions “very productive,” reports the Shreveport Times. Louisiana is one of several states that have been vying to host the new command and rightly felt it had a leg up over other contenders since Barksdale is the current site for Cyber Command Provisional. Last week, as word spread of the Air Force’s cyber pause, Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) cited the Russian incursion into Georgia and the accompanying Internet attacks as “a stark reminder that the threat of cyber terrorism and warfare is very real.” She said in an Aug. 13 statement, “These attacks in Georgia should put the new Air Force leadership on notice that the time for the US to act on a strong cyber defense command is now, and any transitional delay must be extremely limited.”